Used to be they went hand in hand.

That’s no longer the case.

I’ve been overwhelmed with information about the Salahis.  You know, the Obama gatecrashers on the new "Housewives" show.  She’s pissed Whoopi dissed her. "USA Today"’s got the story of her day.  I should be interested why?

Michaele Salahi, and I had to look up her name, believes if she’s got fame, her life will work.  Have her speak with all those out of work "Real World"ers, who are stopped on the street yet are penniless.  They’re derided.  They’re known as two-dimensional TV characters.  They’ve got no intrinsic value.

Used to be it was very hard to be famous.  But now Perez Hilton has risen from nothing to tell us…  What, he’s another bitchy man who wants to play on the A team?

And what is the A team?  A bunch of no-talents drinking and drugging in the clubs?

Everybody wants in.  Yup, as if you get a badge and the club is endless fun.  But it’s not.  And you only get staying power if you’ve got money.  Fame doesn’t last.  Just ask Kara DioGuardi.  Now what?  A bunch more shitty top forty songs for girls who haven’t yet reached puberty?

In the nineties, you could only be famous by being on MTV.  You had to be pretty, and be willing to do everything your handlers told you to do.

But then we got "Survivor" and the plethora of reality TV.  And everyone got broadband and there was Facebook and Twitter and everybody was suddenly fighting for attention.  How many MySpace friends do you have?  How many followers on Twitter?  People want to win rankings, when artists win hearts.

That’s much more ethereal, much more difficult.  In other words, it’s easy to buy fashionable clothing, but much more difficult to get someone to fall in love with you.

The major labels are in the fame game, not the artistry game.  And, if you’ve got a smidgen of artistry/talent, that takes a back seat as they try to push you in front of everybody and make you famous so they can make money.

And since newspapers and gossip sites need something to print, they focus on this information, when it’s here today and gone tomorrow and has no nutritional value.

You know how someone’s a loser?  When they complain they just haven’t gotten attention.

Making it in music, for the long haul, is so complicated.  You’ve got to have the chops, you’ve got to be in play, you’ve got to get lucky.  Eliminate the dues, eliminate the luck, and you’ve got the major label top forty wonders of today.

Isn’t it funny that the fame of the Silicon Valley wonders comes AFTER the success of their product.  No one hypes us telling us who Mark Zuckerberg is, we get hooked by Facebook and then want to know who the mastermind behind the site is.  Whereas Snooki says LOOK AT ME!  And after we do, we wonder what’s inside…nothing.

So the whole music world has bifurcated.  Between those who’ve got fame and those who are artists.  Sure, some of those doing well on the road have both, but these are the classics, the Eagles, the Eltons, the McCartneys.  But the new famous acts sell tickets for a short period of time, and then we forget them.  Just like we’ve forgotten Paris Hilton, famous for nothing, no longer hot.  Now we’ve got Kim Kardashian in her place, a pale imitation…but the paradigm still works, to a degree anyway.

So who are you?  Someone seeking fame or an artist?

If you want fame, start making friends on Facebook, try out for "American Idol", be grist for the mill. And if we pay attention at all, it’s for the train-wreck.  Which is why we watch the "Idol" auditions…  To see bad performers who believe they’re good.  How could they be so delusional?

But a great artist?

He speaks through his instrument.  He doesn’t have to dance, he just starts picking his guitar or starts singing and your jaw drops.

And a great artist is on a journey.  What happens today couldn’t happen without what came before, and tomorrow will be completely different.  Which is why we no longer care about the new work of the classic rock artists, they’re playing it safe, it’s just a repeat of what’s come before.

So focus on your artistry.  And know that’s what really sells tickets.  The key is to be so good that people bond to you.

But that’s much more difficult than getting plastic surgery and saying LOOK AT ME!  So difficult, that the machine wants no part of it, the odds of success are too low.

Sure, Ahmet Ertegun wanted hits, but a hit fifty years ago had a fraction of the impact it does today, and it generated a fraction of the revenue.  So the music was a key element.  How do we make the music so irresistible that people want to listen to it and we can make enough money to make more music.  Now it’s about investing a lot to create a sure-fire product that will rain down revenue.  In the seventies, you made your album and delivered it to the label sight unseen.  The A&R guy had no impact, you often recorded by your lonesome.  And the label put the album out, because they trusted the artist…to know more than they did.  Now, the label wants you to co-write, work with producers and won’t put out the album until they’ve got guaranteed hit singles.  Huh?  Who’s the artist here?  The player or the businessman?

I know, it’s lonely in the wilderness.

But that’s your choice.  Either you’re a lifer, practicing, waiting for your lucky moment, or you’re a fame whore, trying to rig the game so you can make some money.

Too many of the old players are interested first and foremost in the money.  They don’t want to be involved in productions they can’t control.  But the public is fickle. You can hype them once, but usually not again.

This is the turning point in music.  This is the crossroads.  This is where the two roads appear.

There will always be a market for train-wreck, but the real money is in artistry.  It pays dividends again and again, year after year.

But it scares the old timers.  Does it scare you?

We live in an information age.  He who has the most information wins.

That’s one of the reasons Irving Azoff is so powerful, he’s working the phones/the relationships 24/7, he’s plugged in to what’s happening and has a bead on the personalities.

But one thing the Fortune 500 are doing that the music industry execs are not is blogging.

Watch this clip.  To the end.  Wherein Tom Peters, management guru, testifies about blogging:

Seth Godin & Tom Peters on blogging

The labels still think there’s a wall.  They’re making sausages on one side and the public is buying them based on marketing/publicity on the other. They don’t know that if there’s no window, the public is now skeptical.  We want to see how our sausages are made, we want to know who is making them and why. Which is one of the reasons we tune into Steve Jobs’ product introductions, for the glimpse inside.  Both Apple and the man.

There may be a book about Edgar Bronfman, Jr., but it doesn’t humanize him much.  He still seems to be the rich kid flying on a private jet untouchable by the general public, his customers.  What does Edgar really think?  I’d follow him on Twitter, I’d read his pronouncements on Warner, even if self-serving. They’d give me insight into the man, and life is about personalities, not money.

Jimmy Iovine…  Imagine if he didn’t hype, imagine if he wrote about the studio days or food or…  Then maybe I’d like him instead of seeing him as a tyrannical string-puller.

And Doug Morris?  Or Lucian Grainge?  Give us your side!

As for the concert promoters…  That’s where all the action is today.  But these people are used to working behind the scenes.  Except for one, the progenitor.  You know if he were still alive today Bill Graham would have a blog.  Where he would rant and rave and insult both the acts and the audience in between saying he was moved to tears by so and so’s performance the night before.

Michael Rapino is not a bad guy.  Why doesn’t he have a blog explaining what he’s doing at Live Nation? Fortune 500 titans do it, why can’t the music business, which is so reliant on the consumer?

P.S. This video was posted on April 18, 2009.  A year ago.  But I got e-mail about it from Ritch Esra today, linking me to Gerd Leonhard’s Media Futurist blog, where it was embedded.  Notice the link?  I pay attention to Ritch, I know Gerd, so I watch.  This clip reached me today.  Even though I think I originally saw it a year ago.  But today, it resonated.  Also, being today, I’d say to focus on Twitter, the micro-blogging service, first.  Because it’s fast and easy and interactive.

P.P.S. Information…  Used to be you had to be an insider to know. The hoi polloi didn’t have access to inside information.  But today, a dedicated surfer can know almost as much as the expert, and can speak like an expert when finally dealing with those in control of the music business.  Don’t blow it.  Don’t act like a wannabe when you get your chance.  Don’t lay down a CD or implore a powerful person to move you ahead on the chess board.  Then you evidence you don’t really know who they are.  Talk to Irving about golf.  Tell Jimmy you hope his divorce isn’t too painful.  Tell Lucian where to get a good burrito in L.A.  The background of all these people is available online.  Research, know them, use this information to your advantage.

P.P.P.S. Read Seth Godin’s blog post today:

Accept all substitutes

The most important part is the end, wherein Seth says:

"The internet has dramatically widened the number of available substitutes. You don’t have to like it, but it’s true. That means you have to work far harder to create work that can’t easily be replaced."

In other words, we can find singing wannabes on every street corner, which is why the Idols are fading. That was a trainwreck fad that’s now done.  If you want to survive, you’ve got to be an original.  Who competes with Wilco?  Or Trent Reznor/Nine Inch Nails?  Neither one of those outfits was an instant success.  But they sustain, their music is still relevant and desirable years on.  In other words, be unique, be yourself, it might take years to make it, but when you do, you’ll last.

In order to justify overpaying independent concert promoters for their companies, Robert Sillerman needed to find someone to buy SFX.  That was always the plan, to find a mark who could be convinced the company was an endless money machine, and must be snapped up.

That company ended up being Clear Channel.

But where was the money?  In order for concert promotion to justify the purchase price there had to be a plethora of new hit acts, that the public wanted to see in droves.  People had to stop going to the movies, stop playing video games and go to concerts. And this seemed especially unlikely as the years wore on and radio itself went into the doghouse and MTV stopped airing videos.

But before those negative indicators truly became clear, to insure profits, Clear Channel had to fill its buildings and corner the market.

There was no choice but to overpay.

You want the best talent, you pay for it.

Suddenly, Clear Channel was paying in excess of 100% of the gross for Jimmy Buffett.  Because if they got him in the shed, they could sell beer and merchandise.  Furthermore, their sponsors would be happy…

This was the world Michael Rapino inherited.  Too many shed shows to satisfy sponsors, meanwhile overpaying talent to play those shows.  And like athletes making deals with sports teams, acts don’t turn down the money.

Meanwhile, the remaining independents are crying foul.  How can they survive giving all the concert receipts to the acts?  Where are they supposed to make a profit?

Needless to say, Clear Channel couldn’t find a profit, it ended up writing off billions on the purchase price before spinning off the company.

Rapino tried to create a system whereby the acts had to share the risk, unless they were guaranteed superstars.

The acts balked.  Because the economy was so good and Clear Channel, ultimately Live Nation, had such an impact on the market, other promoters now overpaid too.  If Live Nation tried to control talent costs, it was fruitless, there was always someone willing to step up and pay.  The casinos didn’t even need to profit on the show, they wanted everybody in the building gambling!

And the public was part of the frenzy too.  Because you just couldn’t get a good ticket.  The press was filled with stories of sold out shows and exorbitant prices on the secondary market.  Reaching its peak with the Hannah Montana fiasco, where moms suddenly couldn’t make their kids happy and wanted the government to intervene.

Of course the government couldn’t understand the business, but pressure had the promoter suddenly coughing up tons of unsold tickets that had previously been held back.  The market was somewhat satiated, but why hadn’t these tickets been sold on the open market to begin with?

The dirty little secret was that by time the on sale for the general public took place, usually only crappy seats were available, all the rest had been pre-sold, to the fan club, American Express…  And then there was the broker problem.  Like day traders in the dot com era, brokers cajoled tickets and offered them at exorbitant prices, making concerts the new real estate.  Yup, it seemed everybody wanted to go and high prices were just the cost of admission to the hippest show in town.

Then Hannah Montana went out paperless and didn’t sell out.

Sure, we can go back a chapter, to the acts caught up in the mania, scalping their own tickets, creating exorbitant V.I.P. packages, trying to beat the brokers and capture all that income for themselves, but the underlying truth was demand was a fiction, it was a trumped up story built by the press and word of mouth.  Most people didn’t want to overpay to see the same acts again and again, they just didn’t want to be left out.

And yes, now people don’t have as much money.  And they’re sick of the exorbitant prices for beer and food that the promoter has to charge in order to make a profit after giving all the money to the act.  And the public is pissed off that Ticketmaster fees are sky high, not knowing that these are kickbacks to the promoter so they can generate a profit.  But the real story is there aren’t enough hit acts to support the system, not at these prices.

Since Napster and the collapse of recording income, there’s little money for investment.  And no one wants to wait, those still at the label want their bonus, they want to make their inflated Wall Street salaries, so there’s no artist development.  Suddenly, it’s almost impossible to build arena acts when the infrastructure demands them.

In the old days, radio was king.  Radio built acts.  Then MTV.  And said acts went on the road and played gigs for…very low prices.

But then Michael Cohl started to buy tours nationally.  INTERNATIONALLY!  And after advancing all that money, prices had to go up.

Isn’t it interesting that Michael Cohl ended up as the largest stockholder in Live Nation.  He devised the 360 system.  Which was all about finding another mark to lay this unprofitable behemoth upon.  But Rapino was afraid of running out of cash, and squeezed out Cohl before he could convince a Telco that concert promotion was an endless cash machine, just like Sillerman convinced Clear Channel.

And now, with the acts getting all the money, the real profit is in ticketing, which is why Rapino broke from Ticketmaster.  But when the Eventim system didn’t work so well and Ticketmaster had little opportunity for growth, the two companies decided to merge.

So the people at the top of the pile could get rich.

Look at the bonus Rapino got upon closing the merger.  Who could generate that kind of money just promoting concerts?

Live Nation was a Wall Street play.  Divorced from the reality of concert promotion.

And then, suddenly, like the sub-prime mortgage mess, the game crashed.  Yup, this summer it turned out people no longer wanted to overpay to see the old acts and there were few new acts worth seeing.

In other words, Live Nation was built on a bubble.

And this bubble not only inflated the cost of beer and pretzels, but talent fees.  And now that the public has declared itself out, nobody wants to take the blame.

The acts don’t want to take less money.  Live Nation just says it’s a few shows away from being profitable.  And the public is asking WHY SHOULD I GO AGAIN?

This summer is not anomalous.  It’s been fifteen years in the making.  There is no support for a business of this size.  It’s gonna have to shrink.  Yes, people want to go see their heart’s desire at a fair price in a small venue.  Sure, they got caught up in the mania of overpaying to go to the big show, but that’s now done.

There’s no such thing as a sold-out show.  You can always get tickets, the brokers are blowing them out outside the venue.  Or Live Nation itself is giving you a deal.  And sure, you want to see GaGa and Swift, but tell me why I need to see the Goo Goo Dolls or Sarah McLachlan or the American Idols?

Idol was a mania.

But that’s faded now too.

Sure, new acts will develop.  But we’re at the end of an era.  We’re in the middle of a giant reset.

News.  That you want to know about when it happens.  But art?  Can one only appreciate the Mona Lisa if you were around during Leonardo da Vinci’s era?

In the last century, in the era of broadcasting, it was all about getting the message out.  Now, most people ignore the message. Or there’s a weak link between the message and the ultimate consumer.

In other words, if you’re making fun of people for being late to the party you’re evidencing you’re not really living in the twenty first century, you like it the way it used to be, when there was little art and you could see every movie and know every record on the "Billboard" chart, when the world was instantly comprehensible to those paying attention.

Now most are paying attention.  Just to different things.

An album enters the chart at number one and is then forgotten.  In the old days, the cultural impact would produce a long tail that would last for months.  Now, it only lasts for a week.

In other words, when your album comes out, the work is just beginning.  It’s not about the first week’s sales, but how you can spread the word.

And it all happens slowly.

Until suddenly, in some cases, it happens quickly.  That’s the power of the Web, if something catches fire, it can be turned into a conflagration overnight, just about everyone can truly know about it.  But then it is usually forgotten, like the movies that opened last weekend.  In other words, if you’re creating art for maximum instant impact, you’re playing it wrong.  You’ve got to create art that lasts for the long haul, that sounds as good three years from now as it does today, because that’s when much of the audience may finally hear it.

Old media, mainstream media, the movie studios and major labels, are all about creating impact today, deriving revenues today. And most of what they sell only generates revenue today.  And all of it reaches fewer people.  The reason albums no longer go ten times platinum isn’t primarily because of theft, but because there are too many options, and this you cannot change.

So, if you’re one of these options…  Second to creating your art doesn’t come marketing, but perseverance.  Can you create something so good that people will still be discovering it years out?  Can you hang in there, forgo graduate school, still create until a mass of fans catch up with you?

Even though fiber optics allow us to send messages around the globe instantly, most are ignored, or the target audience is unaware of them.  But when you’re at a friend’s house for dinner, or when a trusted source sends you a link, you might finally come on board, you might finally get it.

Just like I finally got Amy Winehouse on a boat ride in Ibiza.  I was relaxed enough, the sun was shining, the album was playing and I got it.  Criticize me, but you’re missing the point.  It’s not about my lack of cool, it’s about something so good that it still has life years later so I can finally get it!

I constantly get e-mailed articles and videos that in some cases I’ve read or seen YEARS before.  But rather than criticize the sender, I marvel at the quality that has allowed the work to sustain.  We’ve entered a new era, where it’s not about dropping a bomb, getting in and out, but percolation.  Almost everything great takes time to find an audience.  Everybody’s overloaded with input.  But everybody’s constantly telling their friends what they like.  And the great stuff lives on and ultimately triumphs.